Last year I sat in a basement and watched couples throw up on each other.

Jan 1, 2000, I spent it in Montreal with my oldest friends... and a family with generators and tons of canned soup. (Just in case)

This year? I'll spend as much time as possible inside a movie theater, paying for one show, seeing as many as possible. Or I'll work. Double time and a half on holidays. Yes I am just avoiding high school friends and one of the exes. They don't understand that I work so I can leave the country. They don't understand I don't like sitting in a basement watching couples throw up on each other.

2008 - Year of the Fuck-Pig. Couldn't be any worse than 2007 - Year of the Shit-horse.

2000 was spent sitting on a massive spar of rock looking down into a valley that contains my home town. I was with some friends, we were drinking champagne and enjoying the massive firework displays that were being put on everywhere. My home town is a lawyer monoculture and conspicuous consumption is mandatory. Everyone was trying to prove they had more money to send up in smoke than their neighbours. It was pretty cool until I realised that I'd drunk two bottles of champagne and was now going to have to walk down a steep and treacherous pathway from the moors in pitch darkness and abject drunkeness.

Last year was spent enjoying a psychotic breakdown and self-medicating with alcohol alone in a darkened house and near complete silence.

This year I'm going to be sober, sane(ish) and actually enjoy the company of my fellow man. There are a couple of house parties going on that I could go to, it's just a question of whether watching one group of friends collapse into alcoholic oblivion is going to be more or less amusing than playing board games with another group of friends who don't really go in for drunkeness.

The whole paying money to get into your local on New Year's Eve seems bizarre and pointless to me and going anywhere outside walking distance of my home will be financial suicide. Holiday taxis tend to ignore your wallet and go straight for the internal organs and blood relatives.

My husband and I have been hanging out with some hippy philosophy students who've become our best friends lately. We discussed taking a few gallons of home made wine and a tent or two out to the woods here for drinking and merry makin'.If we don't do that we may just lock ourselves in the comic book store overnight...get some cajun food and wine and rent some movies...Haven't been invited to any other parties yet...but something might come up...

I'm actually going to be in Palm Springs preparing for a film festival. I don't know anyone there and have never been there before. If anyone knows where I might find a good time on New Year's Eve in the springs feel free to let me know.

New Years Eve 2000: County fishtank with thirty fucking abject crazies who were discussing the coming End Times. New Years Eve 2008: Work...which is a damn sight better although there are <em>far</em> more crazies.

I got out of work on 2000 with just enough time to drive to my favorite local bar. It was pretty cleared out and they had loaded up on little bottles of champagne. They had a discount on Mimosa's for months afterward. It was pretty anti climatic. I believe I heard Prince do 1999 yet again.This year I tried to explain to the boss that they really aren't giving my the holiday off if I have to work from 11 pm to 7 am. He didn't buy it. In this case I will be on call. Unless I can persuade my fiends to only go to places with wireless broadband and carry the laptop around I will probably be at home.

I flew from San Diego to Japan yesterday, and am jetlagged as all shit. as of 10:53 PM, I'm watching Red & White on TV, blipping around on the net, and considering just going the fuck to bed. New Year's is a boring family-oriented holiday here anyway.